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Twenty Questions YOU MUST ASK on a First Date

Adam Eli Clem is a dating expert. His particular expertise is confined to the toughest of dates, the first one (he goes on many of these). Forthwith is his essential companion compendium to the fine art of surviving the first date. These questions are very important, so you should probably write them down.

1. Does your older sibling work in this restaurant? Is there any reason to believe that he/she will approach and make a comment about your raging eating disorder?

2. Are you striking up conversations with the male stranger sitting next to you in an attempt to make me jealous? Which book(s) suggested that that would be a cunning move?

3. Did you ever do a lot of blow with your best female friend and then have terrible sex with her?

4. Were you ever in a halfway house as part of recovery from heroin addiction? Were you older than fifteen?

5. Have you ever attended Kinky Kamp? As a Kamper, or as a Kounselor?

6. In reality, are you Ukrainian, not Russian, and was your thyroid problem caused by Chernobyl?

7. Do you have an ugly scar, caused by an injury you’ll keep secret in melodramatic fashion, that is, in fact, the result of your having downed a quart of vodka before passing out with a lit cigarette in your hand?

8. Have you lost a fiancé to premature death, and tried to memorialize him by tanning a buffalo hide? Was the procedure a success? If not, where did you dispose of the rotting hide? In your backyard? By cremation, or burial?

9. Do you intend to ask me if I prefer panties, or thongs?

10. When you come back from the ladies’ room, are you going to slyly press your thong into my hand?

11. Is the name of your dog tattooed behind your lower lip?

12. Have you ever drowned someone else’s dog in a National park? Was it an accident? Are you sure?

13. During first dates, do you customarily place your head on your date’s shoulder within the first half-hour?

14. Is it my imagination, or has your dog been eating his own feces while you were out?

15. Do you like to give your mother buttock massages, with or without her permission?

2 Comment

Those are good ideas, Holly. The pockets on the cargo pants would be irresistible to women with urges to initiate inappropriate physical contact (13, 15, 6, 2, 19), while the hat would remind any young widow of her dead fianc